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College students move one step closer to majoring in Pokemon Go

Forget dodgeball. Hunting for Magikarp and Meowth is now a part of one university's physical-education curriculum.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
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Magikarp, or math? University of Idaho students now can do both.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper/CNET

Ciao, calisthenics. Bye-bye, basketball. College students at one US university will now be earning class credit for hunting down Pikachu in a physical-education class.

This fall, students at the University of Idaho can enroll in Pop Culture Games, which the college is dubbing "Pokemon 101."

"I want it to be more than people going, 'I'm going to go catch a Pikachu,'" instructor Steven Bird said in a statement. "You get to adventure around, seeing different things, being active, seeing the sun. It allows you to move in large groups and a team. You get not only physical activity, but you also get team-building and leadership."

The class will also incorporate the tag-like game Humans vs. Zombies, and will include a campus-wide multi-day competition.

The school hopes to encourage students who might normally shy away from organized exercise to get outside and get moving.

"Our interest is to turn folks on to an active lifestyle, and that can be achieved in endless ways," said Philip Scruggs, chair of the Department of Movement Sciences. As someone who couldn't even get into the always-full aerobics classes at my college in the 1980s, I say go with the flow, Idaho.